Harare – Mikaylah Mushinga, a 13-year-old Zimbabwean schoolgirl, has bravely articulated her experiences of racism in England in a new book titled ‘I’m More Than The Black Girl,’ which was unveiled in Harare on Tuesday night. The book details the challenges she faced after moving to the UK, including unsettling questions from her schoolmates and the realisation that her race defined her in a way it never had back home.
Mikaylah’s story began in May 2022, when she was just 10 years old. Her family made the decision to settle in the UK, and she embarked on her first ever plane journey, a long flight from Harare to Birmingham, with connecting flights in Doha, Qatar and Belgium. For the past three years, England has been her home, albeit a world away from her life in Zimbabwe. Now, she has become the first Zimbabwean teenager to compress all that she has gone through, in the difficult transformation that has come with the change of location, into a book.
Upon arriving in England and starting school, Mikaylah was confronted with a barrage of questions that highlighted the stark differences in perception between her life in Zimbabwe and the stereotypes held by her new peers.
“Here I had to learn that existing, while Black, came with conditions,” she writes. “They would ask questions meant to be ‘funny’ but far from it.”
Some of the questions she faced included:
- ‘Do you have water in Zimbabwe?’
- ‘Did you live in a hut?’
- ‘Did you wear real clothes?’
- ‘Did you go to school?’
“The way they asked me, it was a trivia game,” Mikaylah recalls.
One particularly jarring question came in her first weeks of Year 7. “Someone even asked if I was a refugee. We were reading a book called Bone Sparrow in class − about a refugee child in a detention centre. Maybe, that’s why they asked but it didn’t feel random. It felt like they were placing me in a story they’ve already decided for me instead of letting me tell my own.”
She continued, “That moment stuck. I didn’t know what to say. Inside, everything tightened confusion, frustration, sadness. I wasn’t a refugee. I was just a girl trying to live my life. But, suddenly, my presence wasn’t neutral anymore. It carried assumptions I hadn’t chosen. In Zimbabwe, no one ever asked me that. I never had to explain my identity or prove I belonged. I never had to shrink myself to feel safe.”
Mikaylah found herself having to navigate a difficult balancing act in response to these questions. “Sometimes I’d answer calmly, pretending it didn’t bother me. Other times I’d be sarcastic – ‘No, there was no water, we drank animal milk.’ Most of the time I’d just stare, wondering how someone could be this clueless and this confident at the same time.”
She also noticed a shift in how she was perceived. “It was as if my presence made people curious but not in a kind or respectful way. In a ‘you’re not like us’ way. And, no matter how much I smiled, softened my voice, or proved I was smart, there was always something in their eyes that said, ‘you’re not like us.’ These subtle hints made me realise that I was Black – not just in skin but in how the world treated me.”
In Zimbabwe, Mikaylah explains, her race was simply a part of everyday life and not something that defined her. “I have always known that I was Black. Always been okay with it,” she writes in her book. “In Zimbabwe, it was just normal. It wasn’t something that needed defending or explaining – it simply was. Everyone looked like me − my friends, my teachers, the shopkeepers, even the people on TV. Being black wasn’t political or loud, it was peaceful, background, freedom.”
However, upon becoming the only black pupil at her school in England, everything changed. “Here, being black isn’t just who I am – it’s what I am to other people. A label. A burden. Something they notice before they notice me. The hardest part was realising that people saw me differently before I even opened my mouth. It wasn’t one big, dramatic moment. It was subtle – a look, a question, a feeling. ‘Where are you from?’ I live here,’ I would answer. I couldn’t possibly just exist here without some exotic, faraway story attached.”
Mikaylah describes the pressure she felt to conform and the ways in which she tried to change herself to fit in. “Suddenly, I had to be careful because everyone was always watching how the black girl behaved. Too loud, and I was aggressive. Too quiet, and I was rude. Too confident, and I was intimidating. Too expressive, and I was ‘too much.’ There was no right way to exist – just a constant balancing act, trying not to be too Black for their comfort. And, the worst part? I tried. I changed my voice, I softened my hair, I avoided speaking Shona in public. I studied how the other girls dressed, acted, even laughed – and copied them. Just to blend in, just not to be freshie.”
Despite her efforts, Mikaylah realised that she could never truly be one of them. “But, no matter what I did, I was still the African girl with the accent. The Black girl. The one who didn’t know how things worked here. That’s when it clicked. I could never truly be one of them. Even when they smiled at me. Even when we sat together. Even when they added me to the group chat. I was still different.”
This realisation, however, became a source of liberation. “And, strangely, that realisation was freeing. Because, if I didn’t belong, then I didn’t have to keep trying. There is a heaviness that comes with being Black here – a weight I never carried in Zimbabwe. There, my race didn’t define me. My personality did. Here, people see my blackness first and decide everything else from there. But, over time, I stopped trying to erase it.”
Mikaylah’s book is a powerful testament to the challenges faced by black individuals in predominantly white societies and a celebration of her identity and heritage. “Yes, being Black in the UK is hard, It’s layered, It’s tiring. But, it’s also powerful,” she asserts. “I carry generations with me. A language, a rhythm, a history that goes deeper than anything they’ll ever learn from TikTok. And, no matter how much they stare, question or joke − I know who I am.”
She concludes with a message of resilience and resistance. “The truth is that we’re not always living here. We’re surviving. We’re resisting. We’re growing. And, somehow, that survival alone feels like a flex. So, when I say the first time I realised I was Black, I’m not saying that I didn’t know that my skin was brown. I’m saying I realised, for the first time, that other people would treat me differently because of it. And, once I saw it, I could never unsee it.” Mikaylah’s book is a bold and fascinating read in which she bravely tackles all the challenges, including racism, which she has faced.
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